Booked the Hell Tour
by stanfordmoose
Summary: Character meta drabble about Sam and Lucifer seeing each other in s13. But, one man understands forgiveness and the other lives in an empty sky. Rated M for Suicide Ideation, Mentions of Past Torture, and Dark Themes.


The air felt metallic. A pungent shift that made it feel like he was swallowing blood. He tasted copper, he realized, and wondered with vague disinterest if he was coughing up his life again. He recalled the red tinted tissues during the trials, waking up in the night choking because he was, as of now, incapable of spitting out his own _blood_ while he slept. He bit harshly at his lip, splitting the fleshy tissue, and making spit-diluted red dribble onto his awaiting fingertips. He needed a _reason_ \- a definitive cause for the blood slowly clogging his esophagus and decided self-mutilation was the only obvious choice.

Something felt _wrong_ \- more wrong than before. He had started to allow himself some complacency. A soft blanket of safety looming over his head for the first time since… well, ever. The bunker was safe, to an extent, but unlike his brother, Sam hadn't nested into the space and claimed it as home. He appreciated the warding, but it was just that - an appreciation of the capacity to be safe, not a true acknowledgement. He supposed that was because his sense of safe had always been _who,_ very rarely a _where_. Even the Impala, his sanctuary and consistent place of rest, felt empty without his brother.

Sam was not allowing himself to be comfortable, it wasn't in his DNA to be stagnant for too long. There was too much work to do and Lebanon was this weird bubble, separated from all _sense_. He was foolish to let his muscles start to unravel, relax and loosen into a life here. That was his own mistake, and as he kept up his compulsive swallowing, he realized that.

Sam felt like a discarded husk as he wandered the streets. He didn't feel _right_ , he couldn't really explain what was wrong, but he felt like he was perpetually forgetting something. He patted his pockets to check for his house keys enough times to, likely, erode the fabric away leaving a big old denim-bald-spot leading to his bum.

No, this wasn't a _"Did I leave the oven on?"_ kind of feeling. This was a deep into your core, make you want to collapse kind of wrong. He realized why the air was so thick all at once - when heard a voice he'd never forget, the voice that was enough to make him vomit, announce an all too cheery, "Hiya, Sammy."

He blanched, gasping, and without much say in the matter ended up on all fours.

Before there was a chance for Lucifer to see him, comment on his weakness, or worse, offer pseudo comfort, he stood. How had he not _noticed_ before? The clawing emptiness and lack of substance… he was panting hard, fingers muddy as they dug into the earth trying to ground himself. He felt dead. Hollow and weak and dizzy.

Images of the Cage assaulted his pupils. He smelled burning flesh - a scent he shouldn't be so familiar with. It burned his nostrils and made him want to gag. The area he was camped in held the lingering scent of blood mixed with smoke. It felt like ants nibbling at his nostrils, burning like cinnamon and equally evasive. He brought a hand up to his forehead, shaking his skull in a vain attempt to not picture the Cage. He couldn't. He never could.

Sam tried to ignore them, ignore the muffled static in his ears, but it was fruitless. Lucifer had a hold on him he hadn't been able to shake - years later. When Lucifer was inside his head, he knew he was going crazy. Despite the confusion and intermingling of doubt, he had been aware it was a mirage - his own psyche tormenting him and doing so with his bruise battered soul. He had known, somewhere in his consciousness, that he wasn't real.

Dean was. Bobby was. Castiel was.

 _Stone number one._

With a subtle press to his hand - a move out of habit - he swallowed residual blood-tasting saliva and realized that this was real, not a hallucination. _Fuck._ He didn't know which he preferred.

And dammit, he _had_ built on that stone. He spent the better part of two years cementing new bricks into place and towering stones to protect himself - to build a feign sense of "okayness" that would be able to fool even Dean. He had finally stopped digging his nails so hard into the scar on his palm that it was constantly needing to be restitched. Gauze and a bandage make near monthly reappearances from where his fingernails left tiny half-moon indentations in his skin. He had stopped using his toothbrush to find perfect aim under his chin. The tool for oral hygiene getting a macabre makeover as he used it as a blueprint to map out where to press the barrel of a gun. Speaking of, it took a year, but he figured it was a pretty significant set of stones that he had stopped sending longing glances to his 9x19mm, loading it in front of his brother - who was entirely unaware that the bullets weren't intended to gank a vamp.

How if he had started to think he had found his redemption in the work he did - if he had really started to believe the trials were purifying his ugly blood, then Lucifer, standing here now, was a reminder how unclean he really was. The man who had provided him with shameful company for years.

He knew he had to act stoic, puff out his chest and remask his vulnerabilities. Bite the inside of his cheek to keep a quiver from his voice. But Sam was _tired_. So tired. He did his best glower, eyes bright with unbridled fear and the inability to hide it.

"It's Sam," He said defiantly, adrenaline sparking the need to mouth off.

 _Back to stone number one._

* * *

A dusty library in Guthrie, Oklahoma, Sam palmed through The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath. It's 1999, and in a rare moment in between hunts the young hunter found a reprieve, a lull, and had sought solitude in the minimal stacks of poetry. Dean was at a bar somewhere, probably telling the chick mixing his drink he was 24 and dangerous and would bring her back to their motel room to get laid. John wasn't home - but, at this point, it didn't strike Sam as odd anymore; he barely bat an eye, really. He was 16 now, old enough to be defiant. Old enough to be resentful.

The last thing - literally, the _last thing_. He'd take eaten alive by a Wendigo, sucked dry by a Wraith, and a dozen other untimely and gruesome deaths, thank you very much - he wanted was to walk in on Dean with Blonde and Long Legged in their twin sized bed, so he delved into the book with no concept of time. Hours passed, probably, but Sam usually didn't notice until words blurred together. Somewhere amongst Plath's entries from November 1955 and April 1956, though, he blanched. The text resonating in a way the teenager couldn't comprehend.

" _I need a father. I need a mother. I need some older, wiser being to cry to. I talk to God, but the sky is empty."_

He has very few possessions in his room at the bunker. A worn copy of that book - the pages smell faintly of mildew and masking tape, the binding held together like an old ledger, with crisscrossing lines of thread - is one of them. He keeps it under his bed with a cheap book light from Barnes and Noble.

There is a quiet torture in living. At least, living as a supporting character within yourself. Sam isn't the author of his own narrative, he hasn't been allowed to contribute to his own story since he was six months old. He's attempted, obviously, countless times. Each one met with contempt and disruption; with blame and guilt, and Sam apologizes - always. He's always sorry, always wrong, and always a few lines behind of everyone else in the scene. For a long time, he felt selfish for seeking the basic human right of bodily - and mental - autonomy. Now, though, despite his best efforts, he realizes it's just not in the cards for him. He is a pawn.

Lucifer gawks in the face of humanity. Rodents infesting on his Daddy's creation; rat poison killing complex, beautiful people. Sam watching them die on linoleum floors.

He had spent so long desperate to feel more clean, atone for the sins of his predetermined evil, while being beguiled and compared to Satan. At 16, Sam didn't know he was bottle fed Azazel's blood like some macabre parallel to nursing from his mother. He prayed to a God in the hopes of being saved, of cleansing a soul he could feel was corrupt. But the sky was empty.

Sam whispered to angels and the Lord and trusted that there was a higher force for good. He wanted to believe, so fucking bad, because he wanted to think that maybe, in the end, he could be saved. The Boy King of Hell, Lucifer's vessel (and his little bitch, in every sense of the word), maybe, he was a pillar for good, too. He could be cleansed of sin and blood like a martyr on the crucifix.

Arms stretched out in welcome as he fell into the Pit.

A lifetime of sitting in his own impurity, that no secret Confessionals could satisfy, have left Sam in the position to boil hatred. He has been given the same opportunity as Lucifer to dismiss forgiveness as a petty construct, let blame victimize him into malevolence. Sam's capacity for relentless, unwavering faith, is what kept him from the destiny Heaven and Hell tried to catapult. Manipulation, lack of agency, and substantial self doubt walk into a bar and talk about all the ways they can make Sam Winchester turn.

But the sky is empty.

He took a deep breath through his nose, wondering how he could feel so vile and nauseated, at the same time, so agitated, thrilling with fear, insubordination and _feelings_. This is what it meant to be human. To feel with ferocity, so many emotions littering your frame that you couldn't discern them all. But, isn't that also what it meant to be an angel? Confused and lost and angry and passionate and reeling.

Played like a fiddle with broken strings, he followed - what he had thought - was God's call blindly back into the Cage. He wishes he could stare with dead eyes at the archangel, scowl with contempt and loathsome reprimand. But he _can't_. He harbors a very visceral fear of Lucifer. How he is sullied and shameful and wounded beyond what even Dean can mend.

" _Being dead, I rose up again, and even resort to the mere sensation value of being suicidal, of getting so close."_

Scars are the body's reaction to trauma. Adhesions on the tissues affecting skin, muscles, tendons, or, you know, maybe souls. New proteins - collagen - fibers replaced the injured tissues and like a callous, a barrier of stronger tissues is formed in its place. Skin is flexible, functional, mobile. It's elastic and bendable, but fragile and tears when you're five and just got your training wheels off but haven't learned to break yet. Scar tissue is stronger than regular tissue. Sam may be made of scars, but that just means he is knitted back together under layer of thicker skin. He isn't open, puss filled or bleeding. And he sure as _hell_ isn't going to express empathy for the devil.

"I'm not here to fight, Sammy. You and I, how does Cassie say it," Lucifer says casually, his hands in his pockets like they're just two friends after a football game. "We do share a _profound bond_." He shrugs, taking challenging step closer to Sam. Asserting dominance. He shifts from his toes to his heels, rocking on his haunches with a smile. "I just want my son."

He flinches, though, each time the archangel calls him _Sammy_. It feels like a violation and he suspects Lucifer knows that. He folds his arms over his chest, hoping the body language could hide any trepidation and remaining antipathy.

"You're not getting him. I won't let you anywhere _near_ Jack. Do you understand me? Whatever game you're trying to pull, I'm not here for it. You're tried out, you know. How many things have you done and where do you always end up? Where are you _always_ going to end up?"

The sky was empty.


End file.
